True Life

This is a literal question Dr. James poses to his new patients, simply asking them, “So next year is your goal to be in the Olympics or a nursing home?” While the question sounds facetious it brings up the most important ingredient for our health; our end goal. What DO you want? Most people respond with wanting to get rid of an ache or pain, losing weight, increasing energy, or alleviating an acute chronic illness or disease. Understandable, but behind that desire is another question with a root answer - Why? Therein lies the bigger motivator. You want to get rid of the aches in my knees so you can hike again and enjoy the outdoors you love and be with family and friends. You want more energy because you can’t fully be there for your family. You need to alleviate brain fog because it’s threatening your work and income. Most everyone has an ultimate goal that goes beyond the ailment itself. In this episode we’ll discuss some of the root desires and why they are so important to clarify if they are to ever be achieved.

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You have heard about certain colors or designs of clothes cause you to lose and immediate 10 lbs, right? At least by perspective. Well, we don’t believe in “hacks”, but this is as close to a health hack as anything we would ever claim. The simple act of tracking certain aspects of your daily life will literally result in bettering your health and wellness. It’s simple psychology. If you write down or take a picture of everything you eat every day, for a week, you will almost inadvertently make better food choices. If you track your physical activity every day for a week, you will end the week having done more physical activity. Awareness changes our behavior and action. Here in our high mountain town of Colorado the weather can change quickly and harshly. A simple word of “icy roads out there” and boom, everyone slows down. In this episode Dr James and I discuss how the simple act of tracking key areas of our lives like Sleep, Heart Rate, Food, Activity and a few others will by proxy elevate your health and wellness. Of course you can go further than the mere awareness and take solid action to utilize the data you receive and improve it. Tracking is an incredibly powerful tool and as you will hear in this episode, makes it possible to ascertain and improve areas of our lives we would otherwise be ignorant and impotent to address. I can say it is also an absolute propensity of our world’s most successful, influential, and healthy people.

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“Extreme living.” This is what people who live with different health habits than the norm often get labeled. If you don’t partake of the office pizza or the church donuts or the family potlock and you go for a run during your lunch break or play tennis on your date instead of seeing a movie, you’re a “health nut.” Like you’ve joined a new religion. In truth, this reality and social pressure is enough to deter many people from practicing the healthier habits they would otherwise adopt. A core longing of humanity is to belong and conforming to our surroundings is a natural desire and reaction. When you join a gang, the entire point is to conform to its ways. We all belong to numerous gangs and their subsequent social pressures. Most people have three primary gangs; their immediate family, their workplace, and friends and extended family. Bucking the norms is difficult. But for you to adopt a healthy lifestyle that does not include the norms of our very recent times, requires seemingly “extreme” choices. We live in a time when characteristics such as kindness, compassion, ethics, and justice seem extreme as well. It may simply come down to the courage to do what is right.

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Nutritional supplements. Do we really need them? Have you taken some for months, spent a lot of money and never felt a difference? Us too. Traditional medicine doesn’t believe in them for the most part, and alternative practitioners routinely, way overdo them. Look, they are called supplements because they are intended to be just that...supplemental. If you had a perfect diet and perfect health, nobody would need them. It’s like exercise, if our days always included lots of movement and effort we’d never need to exercise. However most of us have work that only requires a butt to sit on. Supplements can be incredibly helpful to deal with deficits in our systems. Maybe we only need them temporarily, some we may need long term. But not all supplements are made the same, and nobody can utilize 50 pills a day. And of course, not everybody needs the same ones! Just because a magnesium supplement or B12 changed your buddy’s life, doesn’t mean you have the same need or deficit! It’s individual. In this episode I believe you’ll hear information that will take some of the doubt, frustration, and confusion away. For most of you, it should help save you money, hassle, and increase the efficacy of any supplements you choose to partake of. I will say, my co host Dr James is a believer in supplements, but quite a minimalist. 

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Cost is one of the primary deterrents for healthy living and non-traditional medical care. Buying whole foods, nutritional supplements, exercising, and seeking alternative health care simply costs more money and can often lead us to minimizing or abandoning the effort altogether. Then there is time expense of working out every day and grocery shopping for fresh food and cooking and cleaning. It is not convenient and time is...money. It can all be overwhelming and demoralizing. So what do you do? In this episode we talk with empathy, but also with some helpful perspective and solutions to help you on your journey and desire.

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Not all of it, but here is the deal, you will actually want to say “Yes!” after hearing this show. Please hear, this is not a blame session, it’s about hope. In a recent discussion with a renowned neurosurgeon he cited better patient outcomes when there is causality, or blame, to point to, as opposed to random factors outside of our control. In Dr. James medical practice he has experienced the same thing, the patients who take little to no responsibility for their ailments have the hardest time improving when compared with others who have the same issues but believe they can affect positive change. Often the “blame” is just our ignorance, what we don’t know. Which again, is so hopeful! We can gain new knowledge and get better! In our culture that is more and more averse to accepting any culpability, blame, or responsibility for our circumstances in life, we are increasing in sickness, depression and financial debt. Might there be a correlation? Or is there just a grand conspiracy of decline being enforced on us and we are all just victims? Where is the hope in that belief. I know this is a volatile issue, but if you’ll hear us out, I think you’ll find yourself more eager to accept some causality, than not to. And possibly any lack of acceptance is a primary reason you are not at the level of health, wellness, energy and vitality you really desire. I encourage you to brave up and listen to this episode and you may very well find a new level of hope.

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With context you’ll realize “Feast on fasting” is not a nonsensical title. As I write this description I recently fasted from being a father and husband and went on a solo, four day getaway.I took the time to do some deep, creative work and the break from some of my daily roles brought me back as a better father and husband, and my family knows it. Not long before this I took a week long fast from my work, and spent it on the beach with my wife. Now aren’t those fasts to feast on?! My friend Shaunti Feldhahn calls us to a 30 Day Kindness Challenge to fast on criticism of a specific person in our lives. But what she teaches us is how life giving the fast is for US! We are the major benefactor. Fasting is not merely abstaining from the things we like. Though, there is merit for that. Let’s take food. Missing a meal, let alone not eating for day is near fightin’ words in the good ole US of A where eating is our primary hobby, if not life vocation. Yet for the greatest span of time, we feasted and fasted. We had a good crop or had a great hunt, and we feasted! Then there were days of travel or harsh weather or scarce food, and we missed a meal, or went a day or even days without eating. Regularly. And you know what, our body is made for that. Much of our dietary problems stem from constantly causing our body stress to be digesting food all the time! Even throughout the night! Almost everybody who merely skips a couple meals in a day, even more so an entire day, attests to...while their taste buds revolted, their body and mind felt much better. But I encourage you to listen to this show. You’ll find a different paradigm on fasting. I for one, do not enjoy abstaining from my various appetites. So you won’t be hearing any pithy excitement from me at abstaining from my main drugs of food, drink, sex and more. But I like the results. I much more enjoy talking about fasting from some of the tasks and roles of life to feast on fulfilling endeavors. You might even come away excited and eager about...fasting.

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This is a case study - Dan Miller is the bestselling author of “48 Days To The Work You Love” and a prolific writer, speaker and coach. However at the end of 2018 at age 71 he found himself barely able to work. He shares the incredible amount of resources he sought for help, including his Primary Care Physician simply stating, “Hey, you’re getting old, make peace with it.” Today he is back to more energy, vitality and overall wellness than he’s experienced in many years. He said, “I didn’t simply get back to where I was before my decline, I’ve far surpassed it.” As you’ll hear in the show, he’s now excitedly finalizing two new books for his publisher and planning out the next 20 years of his productive life. It’s no miracle. It’s just the basics. It’s the things you can do too. Now at age 72, I’d pit his cognitive abilities and much of his physical abilities as well, against the average 50 year old. I believe you’ll relate to much of what you’ll hear in this candid conversation between Dan, Dr Randy James, and myself. Of interest for you to know, Dan is my Dad! Many of you will know him from his top ranked “48 Days” podcast. You can find him at 48days.com. 

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In this episode we finish out the four foundational pillars of Functional Medicine with the third episode on Relationships. In episode 11 we talked about the vital relationship between your body and mind. In episode 12, the relationship you have with yourself and the world through hope and purpose, faith in essence. Here then we land on your relationship with - other people. I think we all realize to a degree the positive and negative affect relational health or lack there of has in our lives. But from a medical standpoint and literal pathologies of body and mind, nothing could be less mainstream. If a stressful marriage and your anxiety, anger, or despair is eating away at you and causing you physical and mental abilities, chances are 99.9% that any traditional medical doctor will never ask, address or uncover the root issue but will treat the symptom with a pharmaceutical. And that is exactly what medical school trains them to do. It’s what they trained my co-host Dr. James to do. So you’re left taking a drug to mask and manage a symptom that you have no idea is being caused by relational strife. We have dramatically impacting relationships in our family, friends, co-workers, employees, business partners and more. Great exercise and good nutrition and solid sleep will help you withstand challenging relationships, but ultimately negative relationships will take down even the mightiest of men. And women. So how does it really affect you and what can you do about it? This is our show, right here.

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This is the next important aspect in the fourth pillar of Functional Medicine - Relationships. This has to do with our relationship with our life in this world. We could easily label it “Faith”, as purpose and hope are the basis of faith. But let’s get to brass tacks; you could theoretically have a healthy body and healthy mind but languish if you have no specific hope and purpose in your life. In reality however,, with no hope and purpose there is little to no chance you will do what is necessary to have much of any health. Which gives us pause to say this focus right here may be the most important part of our four pillars, or at least sequentially first. Studies have shown the happiest people are those who are actively working towards something, and feeling progress and achievement. They have drive and aspiration. Regarding purpose, it is by far and large realized by being of value to other people. Being needed and desired...and generally in the form of serving others. This is how we find our place in the world and make sense of it. When we talk of hope, we mean the hope in relation to true belief and expectation, not the flitting hope to win the lottery or find a fairy godmother. And when we speak of purpose, it is a core meaning for getting up in the day. It doesn’t even have to be a grandiose, super altruistic purpose. Again, it’s tempting to give this topic the label of faith, but like hope, there are many with a mere fantastical faith that doesn’t result in any forward progress and tangibility to life. Dr Randy James and I candidly cover his experiences around this subject with patients, and the dire need for it in our culture that seems to be losing touch with hope and purpose, and how you can clarify and leverage it in your life.

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